UK: Journalist left the Guardian in 2003 because of its ugly, anti-Jew rhetoric

Julie Burchill writes @ Mirror:  Labour Party "Jew-hatred" is cynical bid for Muslim vote

As someone whose autobiography was called I Knew I Was Right, I’ve never been backward in coming forward when it comes to world-class gloating.

But never on any subject have I wanted so much to be proved wrong as on the obscene level of anti-Semitism – or Jew-hatred, to give it an uglier, more accurate name – infecting the left-wing in this country.

A whopping 13 years ago, I wrote a farewell piece in the Guardian explaining that I was leaving my job on the newspaper – the established voice of the British Left – due to what I saw as its ugly, anti-Jew rhetoric and accompanying Islamophilia (the final straw was when they ran an opinion piece by Osama bin Laden).

In that year, 2003, attacks on Jews had risen by 75% and since 2000 there had been a 400% increase in attacks on synagogues.

And the EU’s racism watchdog had recently suppressed a report on the rise of anti-Semitism because it concluded that Muslims were behind many incidents.

“What sort of world do we live in, when racism is ‘allowed’ to be reported only if it comes from the white and the right?” I wondered at the time. And the statistics are far worse now.

The strange fruit which was allowed to blossom by a Labour Party, smug in its anti-racist credentials, has turned the party into a rotting edifice fatally riddled with the ancient disease of anti-Semitism.  The long, lonely road here started with the perfectly ­reasonable desire to be anti-racist and ended up poisoned by what I call Paint-Chart Politics. [...]

There are 230,000 Jews in this country and two million Muslims. If the Labour party was currently committing self-immolation for purely ideological reasons, it would be tragic enough. But the fact that they are doing it cynically, as well – to win the biggest group of voters – compounds their catastrophe.

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